Facebook will use photo-matching tech to take down revenge porn

Facebook is to use photo-matching technology as part of new tools to prevent the spread of revenge porn on its platforms.

Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of global safety, said the social media site will use the technology to increase security for users across its different apps. “This is part of our ongoing effort to help build a safe community on and off Facebook,” she said.

As part of the new tools, “specially trained representatives” from the site’s community operations team will review images that are reported to them and remove them, and will in most cases suspend the account that shared the image.

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“We then use photo-matching technologies to help thwart further attempts to share the image on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram,” said Davis. “If someone tries to share the image after it’s been reported and removed, we will alert them that it violates our policies and that we have stopped their attempt to share it.”

Revenge porn is the sharing of private sexual images without the subject’s consent. It was made an offence in England and Wales in April 2015, and according to the most recent Violence Against Women and Girls report, 206 people were prosecuted for such offences in the law’s first year. Other countries have also introduced laws to deal with revenge porn.

“We are delighted with the announcement made by Facebook today,” said Laura Higgins, founder of the Revenge Porn Helpline UK. The new process will provide reassurance for many victims and reduce the amount of harmful content on the platform, she said. “We hope that this will inspire other social media companies to take similar action and that together we can make the online environment hostile to abuse.”

Meena Kumari at independent charity Victim Support said Facebook’s announcement was a positive move but more needed to be done to support victims of revenge porn.

“Facebook’s announcement of a tool to clamp down on sharing images flagged as revenge porn sounds like a step in the right direction, but we believe more needs to be done on a wider scale, including changing the law to afford victims the same automatic anonymity in the media as those who make a complaint of rape and other serious sexual offences,” she said.

Without anonymity, victims’ names and details could be reported in the press and lead to images and videos being shared more widely, she said.